Welcome

Welcome to the FitGear360 site which was established to hopefully provide helpful information and insight that might be of assistance with your fitness equipment purchasing decision. With the increased abundance of online purchases as well as all forms of fitness gear, we felt it was important to assist shoppers by posing some things to consider in order to get those most out of your purchases. If you have ever done the following then buying a fitness item, the hopefully this site will help.

Have you ever made these mistakes?

Bought a product to realize you were unsatisfied with how it worked

Ended up wishing the product had a missing feature

Didn’t realize a product required special handling or maintenance

Had to send a product back several times until you found the right size and fit

Ended up adding the product to all the other unused gear in your closet

We all have been caught in the purchase trap due to great advertising or the limited amount of information available especially when trying to make a purchase online, relying on the site’s product description. When unable to physically see or try on a product, talk to a sales rep, even use the product, you must find ways to fill in that information gap.

This site will attempt to provide you with the following form of consideration “pointers” across a range of different fitness products. As we receive feedback and insight from site participants, the data will continue to be updated and expanded.

Then maybe you should consider some of these questions before your next purchase!

Does it make sense to try a product in a store first to make sure it fits appropriately?

If you knew “this” about your product would you still make the purchase?

Does the product description provide enough information on features and maintenance demands to allow for an educated decision?

Did you look at the product reviews by other users to help get a product satisfaction gauge?

Below is the current feature product that provides many of the group level considerations similar to those provided throughout the site, but also goes into more specific product features and things to think about when purchasing the product.

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Feature Product

The Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor is the discussed device in the current feature article. The product is rated approximately 4.5 Stars by fellow user postings on Amazon.com. The watch offers a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver along with heart rate monitoring functionality through the use of a chest strap. Because it uses GPS capabilities, the watch can be used to track speed, distance, and elevation when running, hiking, etc.

You can also set the device up for multi-usage training, enabling you to go from running to biking. The watch is not water resistant and from reading fellow owner posts can easily get “water logged”, so no running in the rain or swimming with this watch. The design of the watch primarily for exercise usage only. As you can see from the picture, the watch design and more importantly the battery are not designed for normal wear and tear. The battery is lithium ion and is rated to have an approximate 1o hour usage capacity before needing to re-charge. In the Garmin specifications the battery should last 3 years with an hour of usage per day. Although the chest strap allows for owner replacement, the watch needs to be sent back to the manufacturer

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for replacement. The watch does link to the Garmin online programs through a UBS cable/cradle system. The watch also retains some training history which is nice for review while you are away from your computer. You can also get some running programs that can be downloaded to your watch from Runner’s World. Although the watch has a lot of great features, you should consider the following;

The 305 is an older model although one of the most favored. This can create a possible reduction in Garmin services. The 310 and 405 are newer versions.

As noted above, the watch is not water resistant so if you are a rainy day runner you may consider an alternative that is water resistant or water proof (especially for swimmers).

The watch does offer a foot pod (add-on) in order to track your distances when running in coverage, indoors, etc. The HR portion of the watch still works which is always a good alternative to make sure you are within your target ranges.

The watch battery cannot be user replaced which can require shipping challenges and time without the device.

Let us know if the information has helped with your purchasing decisions or if you have other helpful information that site participants could utilize.